Grand Tour

Awash in romantic melancholia and feverish longing, Grand Tour is the latest feature by Portuguese auteur and TIFF favourite Miguel Gomes (Tabu, TIFF ’12; Arabian Nights, TIFF ’15; The Tsugua Diaries, with Maureen Fazendeiro, TIFF ’21). The film’s titular expedition begins in 1917 in the Burmese capital of Rangoon, where downbeat British diplomat Edward (Gonçalo Waddington) is due to meet his fiancée Molly (Crista Alfaiate), arriving after a protracted, long-distance betrothal. Instead, he panics and flees, hopping a ship to Singapore and setting off a series of Asian peregrinations, each increasingly laden with doubt, hangovers, and existential anguish. Meanwhile, the more sanguine Molly responds to her sudden abandonment with good faith, humour, and Katharine Hepburn–like brio, determined to track down and marry her bashful beau. Sending Edward missives along the way, Molly’s continental pursuit reveals both a burning ardour, and the sway of the lingering vestiges of certain colonial empires.

Wedding contemporary documentary fragments with dazzling, painstakingly detailed sequences shot on a soundstage, the kaleidoscopic images toggle eras, cultures, and styles in a bifurcated, wildly ambitious travelogue. Situated between artifice and actuality, Grand Tour is a feat of visionary filmmaking whose sooty expressionism harkens back to the golden age of silent cinema and rightly garnered Gomes the Best Director award at Cannes. It’s a magnificent excursion that reminds us of cinema’s singular ability to interrogate and refine our positions in the world.

ANDRÉA PICARD